Tweet
I ventured the opinion that much of the opposition to Barack Obama is racially motivated, and several people spoke up, “No, it’s ideological. Clinton was hated, and he wasn’t black!” Yeah, and not all people who jump are suicides.
So I googled “renig” – you know, the racist bumper sticker, “Don’t renig in 2012!” and what did I see? All sorts of sites purporting to explain the word “renig” as “a common misspelling of “renege”. Really? What do you bet those sites didn’t exist before the racist bumper sticker, and were created for the sole purpose of defending the bumper sticker’s author as merely illiterate, not racist. There was even one site masquerading as a wikipedia entry.
Now, extremism in defense of liberty may be no vice (depends on how extreme, I’d say), but what do you call extremism in defense of racism? In denial of racism, even? Which is worse? Knowingly denying racism, or believing that “renig” (and the monkey cartoons et c. et c.) is all sheer innocence, and it’s the ones calling it out that are evil? Reality has taken a leave of absence, and this misanthrope is finding it increasingly harder to remain cheerful. Maybe it’s roaches, after all, that are the crown of creation.
28 Comments
Highly recommended. Let us not forget all of our fine non-racist Obama haters in the progressive blogosphere, too.
“There are none so blind as will not see”.
Hey, thats almost as good as “The lesser of two evils is still the boogieman.”
[:o)
I read somewhere recently that 60% of white folks harbor some form of racism.
Those ancient tribal instincts and beliefs die hard.
This is the sort of story favored on Firedog Lake lately. Fantastical
In a racist culture there are two kinds of people: repentant racists and unrepentant racists. Some are unrepentant because of lack or awareness, others from ignorance, and the last are decisionally unrepentant.
What most white folks label as “racist” are the decisionally unrepentant.
For most progressives, a little self-reflection can go a long way. And can make that moral high horse look a little less romantic.
Really insidious….if it’s in one’s background at all, there is an almost automatic something. Even the Pres. tell stories about his own grandmother. That bad ugly stuff has to be deliberately unlearned; the tragedy is in all the stuff that is really ugly and full of hate…intentionally.
The (racist?) one-trick donkey passes more gas.
Please remember that plenty of people of color harbor bigotry or racism, also.
Yep. And people who pretend they don’t have any such racisms, like, oh this comment:
I’m sure Pam appreciates your sagacity.
Of course White racists hate Obama because he’s Black. It sure as hell ain’t because he’s spending a few billion taxpayer dollars every month slaughtering Afghan Muslims who dare attempt to defend their ancestral lands from US military aggression.
Well of course. Fighting unwinable, irrational wars of aggression against some evil people is what defines their lives. Islamic terrorists are the new commies.
“Evil people”? “Terrorists”? You mean the human maggots prowling the halls of Congress, occupying the White House, working at the Pentagon, and sitting in corporate boardrooms all over this fair country? Of course you do. You certainly can’t be referring to the same native Afghan Muslims that were called “Freedom Fighters” when the US armed them to fight the Soviet Army.
Nice to see you using your wendydavis file again, Kelly. Your decoder ring must be a pip, too. Sweet.
If you haven’t been the object of racial loathing before, you may not be able to understand it. I won’t say that at the core I don’t understand the root of some of it, but it happens.
It’s like this – your High Priestessness of Wonderfulness and Absolute Purity Projection is just rife with holes.
So if you don’t say things that are easily detestable, and simultaneously refutable, i.e. “clear-headed blacks”, where it is implicitly implied that the rest of the “blacks” must be some how muzzy-headed or otherwise addled if they don’t agree with you, then I couldn’t say anything to rebut you, now, could I?
No.
But you do.
Ah, a honey pot diary…
… or perhaps it could be called a briar patch diary…
Some questions:
Does the color of Barack Obama’s skin matter in any consideration of his policies and goals?
Does the color of his skin make those policies and goals any more or less reprehensible?
Does thinking that the Obama presidency sucks because of his policies and goals make me more or less racist?
Yes, I see that I could have expressed it more clearly, Kelly Canfield, but as ever, you grab a quote out of context and show it folks who may get riled by it. Did you mention that I brought up that the Treble Army videos at BAR would be seen as racist if anglos had made them? No.
You took a comment over to a thread on women’s rights that way. It was a commenter saying that abortion rights (I think) were small potatoes, but again, you provided no context for the discussion as to which were the key issues that needed addressed foremost lest we lose them all.
I reckon we all have biases of some sort, and our jobs should be to try to overcome them. It’s been really helpful to me to have been the object of racism, or at least prejudice (so many different terms on a scale) by members of one particular NA tribe, and a majority of Spanish in a small town in northern New Mexico. I use that term carefully, because they were quite clear that they were Spanish Land Grant Spanish, and had no Indian blood in them.
We were subjected to some pretty hideous treatment, and no recourse under the existing law. Anglos were still being burned out there as late as the mid ’70s. And yeppers, even after we moved back to Colorado, it took me a while to not be afraid of Latinos.
More background for my clumsy comment is that I used to blog at a site at which a number of blacks called many of us racist for criticizing OBomba’s policies and extra-Constitutional actions. When a black woman from NYC would come onto a thread and lambaste them for what they were doing, it was fresh air. As in: they couldn’t call her a racist, or at least with any credibility.
signed,
the High Priestess of Wonderfulness
Upon reflection, what I meant more specifically about Dixon and/or Ford was that they are logical about their criticism. Either can show stats and facts concerning blacks re: unemployment, access to education, rates of expulsion in schools, non-violent drug arrests and prison sentences, etc., and then describe needs v. deeds as far as OBomba and the ‘black mis-leadership class’ in Congress. Clear-headed stuff, imo, which is not to say they don’t let their anger show at times.
@ cmaukonen: I’d clipped this link recently and meant to read it more thoroughly later. It may be the survey you saw, and it indicates that implicit racial prejudice has increased in the past four years. Without seeing the survey questions, or having knowledge if those questions really do provide more insight into racial attitudes, it’s hard to want to take it at face value.
We keep hearing that among young folks, racial and sexual orientation biases are ratcheting way down. I do hope it’s true that the trend among the young is in that direction, but we have a long way to go before we’re by any measure ‘a post-racial society’.
We should all be as clearheaded as the subjects of Gary Younge’s journalistic study:
https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/commentisfree/2012/nov/03/obama-african-americans-paradox
O please…pay no attention. Thanks for the post
es, we are all racist. It’s a quality imbued by evolution.
Fear of the “other.”
If you deny it, the impact can only be more insidious.
Tell me there isn’t an element of racism in the over-the-top progressive hatred of Obama and the disdain for the increasingly non-white Democratic Party that Obama represents.
It’s not what you say but what you do that counts.
Watch the GOP rallies on C-Span, see how many coloured faces there are in the crowd compared with the Obama rallies.
Tell me then how you are not an unwitting participant with this overt white people’s conspiracy:
Hmph! I was called “racist” right here at firedoglake four years ago for daring to point out that Obama was one of the least progressive persons in that Democratic field. Later I was called a “PUMA” for suggesting that gloating over Clinton’s defeat was probably not the best way to encourage her supporters to climb on the Obama bandwagon. This year I’ve been accused of everything from being a knee jerk Democrat to being complicit in genocide, simply for stating the axiomatic truth that Obama is better in most issues I acre about than Romney. Sometimes people abuse the title of racist, sometimes people don’t apply it to obvious racism. I grew up in Texas in the 60s and though my parents weren’t especially racist, they were products of their time. I have struggled with making race based assumptions and I wouldn’t condescend to pretend to be above the fray but I have evolved on this matter. I have come to realize that bigotry is bigotry and all of it comes from the same roots: Ignorance with a dose of fear. These days, the only people I’m prejudiced against are bigots. Black, white, regional, religious, tall, short, fat, skinny, dietary, purity, etc. Why can’t we just stop making assumptions about people based on the neat little boxes we try to force them into?
I’m not taking your meaning, RevBev. Could you explain, please?
hello, wet one. funny how they squirm, “It’s Michelle’s arms, they way she flaunts them.”
Bedonk, only a racist would argue that racism is ubiquitous, inescapable and undeniable in every individual, as you do. Ie, you want everyone to believe that your racism is perfecly normal and therefore acceptable. It’s not, even if it’s less overt and virulent than the average right-winger. As you proclaim yourself a racist, you’ll pardon me if I reject your braying advice to other people on the topic.
Y’know, it’s almost psychic the way dt just somehow knows that our objections to Obama’s policies must be racially motivated deep down inside…
To him it probably seems clever, as no one can objectively prove with 100% absolute scientific certainty that they’re not racist — at least to some loudmouth accuser somewhere. I’m going with “almost psycho” in this case.
Gee, I’m pretty sure that I would hate Obama’s policies even if they had been implemented by an entirely-white President, such as George W. Bush, rather than a mixed-race President like Obama. Oh, wait…most of Obama’s policies WERE implemented by Bush, and I didn’t like them any better then.
In fact, I seem to recall that I worked long hours four years ago to raise over $1,350,000 to elect Mr. Obama to end these policies. So you might think that my disgust with and hatred for Mr. Obama is a result of his political record, which has changed in the four years since I was a supporter of his, rather than the color of his skin, which hasn’t.
But no, I’s just a big ole racist. Re-Elect Barack or join the Klan. Hail, victory! Christ on a cracker, the idiocy…I knew it was strong in Ass-Bot (aka donkeytale), but it’s depressing to see it spread like this.
It was a good dissection, and thanks, cassiodorus. Do you turn out be a he?
I dunno; as I said here (or was it the hell on some other thread where…never mind): I reckon we all have some biases to contend with (at least I know I sure do). The thing is, if we’re trying to be Better People and abjure any accidental teachings of anglo superiority, it’s important to own up to it, and work to neutralize it.
When I didn’t want romance with a black man in my youth, was it because I was a closet racist? No. I wasn’t attracted to him, and I had nothing to prove to him, myself, or the world. Had I been romantically interested in him (now this was back when dinosaurs roamed yada, yada…) would I have heard my parents’ voice telling me what hell it is for kids of a mixed marriage? Yes. And yes.
Turns out, even christ, thiry? years later, raising kids of color (red and black) in an anglo/Latino community was seriously difficult enough, and by that I mean: for them.
But Dunkey is obsessed with the Whiteysphere’s failure to attract people of color to third party movements.
Sometimes, Dunkey, as I said on a BAR column: People choose themselves for either a movement or a party. Mugging for their votes? Meh.